Late Work Hours Can Shake Marital Stability, Study Suggests

By Kay Hyatt for the Journal of Marriage and the Family

Millions of American couples include a spouse who works late or rotating hours. Such couples are experiencing significantly higher separation and divorce rates than those with spouses working only fixed daytime jobs or shift workers without children, according to Harriet B. Presser, a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland's Department of Sociology and director of the Center on Population, Gender, and Social Inequality.

Her study, funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and the first to examine longitudinal data for the consequences of working late night hours on marital stability, reveals a risky trade-off between the economic benefits and family costs of such schedules.

For couples with children, the risk of divorce increases up to six times when one of the spouses works between midnight and 8 a.m. as compared to daytime hours, according to Presser's findings. The extent of the increased risk depends on the gender of the spouse and the length of the marriage. These results were evident when controlling for the number of hours worked as well as variables such as education of spouses, previous marital experience, age difference, number of children and the ideologies of both spouses about gender roles. But working those same schedules does not indicate a higher risk of divorce for couples without children.

"Clearly, something is going on when one or the other spouse works nights that adds extra stress to the marriage," Presser says. The fact that non-standard work schedules do not affect marital instability when couples have no children suggests that, in the absence of responsibility for children, couples are fairly well able to cope with whatever stress their work schedules generate. The critical factor for couples with children seems to be the physical demands of late and changing work schedules combined with the psychological stress they generate on families. Findings from her previous research suggest that complicated work schedules are most often determined by employer demand and job availability, not by personal choice.

Among dual-earner couples where one spouse works days and the other evenings or nights, fathers are the primary caregivers of children in virtually all cases when their wives are employed, according to Presser. While the greater involvement of fathers in child care is desirable and the reduced child care expense is economically beneficial to the family, these gains may be offset by the longer-term costs to the marriage.

"Working non-standard schedules profoundly affects the scheduling and functioning of family life," says Presser, noting that the number of waking hours spouses can spend together is determined by which hours they are employed outside the home as well as how many. "If indeed, social interaction among family members builds greater bonds, communication and caring, we would expect that the more time spouses have with one another, the more likely they are to develop strong commitments," she says. "Conversely, the lack of time for building such connections, combined with the physical stress of working nights or changing

Presser's analyses of existing data reveal the widespread prevalence of dual-earner parents working different shifts. As one spouse comes home to face a "second shift," the other is getting ready to leave for his or her regular work day (or night), which basically simulates a single-parent home, says Presser. The relationship of work and family is complex and can greatly influence one another. Journal of Marriage and the Family editor Robert Milardo concurs.

A professor of human development at the University of Maine, Milardo says that a growing body of evidence is showing that it is not simply long work hours that is the culprit. Rather it is "long work hours and role overload that are consistently being associated with less positive parent-child relations and conflict. In the case of Dr. Presser's work, we are seeing that late hours exacerbate the situation leading to a substantial increase in marital instability," he says. "Where there is a poverty of time in families, it has its greatest effect on parents."

The proliferation of non-standard work schedules is a significant social phenomenon with important implications for the health and well-being of individuals and families and for the shaping of social policies, according to Presser. Yet, the dilemma is not part of the public discourse. A social demographer, Presser puts America's changing work schedule and it's potential for impacting family life into context:

o Based on 1997 national data (and reported in the June 11, 1999 issue of Science), Presser notes that only 54.5 percent, a bare majority, of employed men and women regularly work a standard (35-40 hour) work week, Monday through Friday, on a fixed daytime schedule. The rest work non-standard schedules (evenings, nights, rotating schedules and/or weekends).

o Two-fifths of all employed Americans work mostly during the evenings or nights, on rotating shifts and/or weekends.

o For the most common U.S. family-- the two-earner couple—the prevalence of non-standard work schedules is especially high. Of those with children under 14 in the household, 31.1 percent work evening, night or rotating schedules and 46.8 percent work weekends. Rarely do both spouses work the same non-standard schedules.

The trends are evident, but the consequences on family life are yet to be acknowledged, according to Presser. "As a society, we have finally moved away from the Ozzie and Harriet view of traditional family life, but we haven't recognized the reality of what the home time structure of today's family looks likes and how its needs have changed," she says.

The work schedules of two-earner families don't generate much attention in the current policy debate, Presser notes. "Who should work nights can't and shouldn't be regulated, but the prevalence of two-earner, split-shift couples and the apparent detrimental impact of night schedules on the quality of marriage and family merit the awareness and consideration of employers, scholars and policymakers," she says. "Given the high divorce rate in the U.S., our steady direction toward a 24-hour economy and the large number of American couples with children working nights, evenings and weekends, we definitely need more research to assess the consequences of work and family trade-offs."